What Happens When Players Finish the Story

Bungie community manager David Dague, more commonly known by the moniker DeeJ, spoke recently about what Destiny 2 players can expect to find after completing the game’s story. In an interview with Heavy, DeeJ answered the question figuratively. He’s not going to spoil the game’s ending a month before launch, after all. But while his answer may not cover any new ground regarding specific in-game content, it is interesting to hear Bungie’s philosophy on Destiny 2 end-game.

After players finish the story in Destiny 2, they almost always want more. Bungie’s job is to deliver not just more, but more that’s actually worth players investing their time.

“… what we want to do is immerse people’s minds in the world of the game and not force them to leave to make their experience complete. I think you’re going to find, even independent of the raid, there’s a far greater variety of things to do to enjoy your Guardian lifestyle after the final cutscene has played out.”

It’s become a cliche that a game truly begins when players reach end-game, but there’s obviously some truth to it. Bungie’s goal is to retain players after they finish Destiny 2‘s campaign – to keep them busy until the next expansion but also to make the game actually worth playing until the next expansion.

DeeJ’s language here shows a deeper understanding of what many players want from a game like Destiny – a story to pull them into the world, to make it real, and then to retain that feeling once the story is over. How to retain a player’s immersion through content that inherently replayable it a challenge very few, if any games have managed well. Yet the Bungie developers thinks they’ve done something to be proud of with Destiny 2, and it will be, at the very least, an improvement over the original Destiny.

While DeeJ doesn’t make any announcements or reveals, he does mention specific features in the end-game meant to increase immersion. For instance, Bungie’s bringing NPCs out of the Tower or other social areas and into the world, hopefully making destinations feel more lived in and characters more real. Maps will be filled with much more diverse content like Lost Sectors and Public Events. DeeJ frames this content as a way for players to “go on adventures,” though he may be referring to a specific feature that Bungie calls an adventure.

What comes after completing the Destiny 2 story? Variety, sure, but hopefully variety worth spending time on, building a better Destiny 2 experience through the playing of.

Destiny 2 releases September 6, 2017 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, followed by an October 24 launch on PC.